Our involvement with important documents often doesn’t end when we sell them. We are happy to work with museums and other institutions to share our client's documents with the public. Here is a partial list of current and past exhibitions that we helped arrange, or that contain significant documents and artifacts that we previously acquired for our clients who lent to the exhibit.

Current Exhibitions

Past Exhibitions

Marking the 150th anniversary of the end of the Civil War and Lincoln’s assassination, this exhibition focuses on the significant, and hitherto unknown, relationships and interactions between Abraham Lincoln and his Jewish friends and associates. At a time when Jews comprised less than one-half of one percent of the American population, and with the country rampant with prejudice, Lincoln’s positive and meaningful personal relationships with Jewish individuals not only arguably changed him but also had an important and lasting impact on the status of American Jews. Lincoln stood up to his anti-Semitic generals even as he depended upon them to win the war, and became an advocate for Jewish equality and acceptance.

Through never-before displayed original documents, artifacts, photographs, Lincoln's own writings, and first person accounts primarily from the Shapell Manuscript Collection, the exhibition will trace events in Lincoln’s life through the lens of his Jewish contemporaries, such as Abraham Jonas, who became Lincoln’s political strategist and “most valued friend,” and Issachar Zacharie, his enigmatic confidant. Furthermore, the exhibition will explore Lincoln’s profound interest in and connection to the Old Testament, as exemplified in his wish to see Jerusalem before he died.

Co-curated by the Morgan Library and the Gilder Lehrman Collection, this exhibit included more than a dozen of our favorite acquisitions for GLC, such as Lincoln’s House Divided speech manuscript and Lincoln’s masterly refusal to pardon a slave trader, suggesting instead that he seek pardon in a higher authority.

On December 27th, 1862, Republican activist John Murray Forbes wrote to Charles Sumner regarding the forthcoming emancipation decree from President Lincoln: “In such a Proclamation words become things and powerful things too.” In 1864, as the meaning of the Emancipation Proclamation began to crystallize both for the millions in bondage and for the country at large, forty-eight autographed copies of the Emancipation Proclamation were put on sale in Philadelphia for $10 each. The Great Central Fair raised over one million dollars for the Union cause, and the relics that remain speak not only to the monumental scope of the Proclamation, its dissemination, and its place in the minds of wartime Americans but also to the power that the words would come to represent. This exhibit will display two of these forty-eight copies from the Fair as well as a wealth of material highlighting the Emancipation Proclamation as a document and as a deed.

Changing America: The Emancipation Proclamation, 1863 and the March on Washington, 1963

To commemorate these two pivotal achievements, the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture in collaboration with the National Museum of American History is presenting an exhibition that explores the historical context of these two crucial events, their accomplishments and limitations, and their impact on the generations that followed. Featuring Schuyler Colfax’s copy of the Thirteenth Amendment, which we acquired for David Rubenstein.

The Life and Times of Abraham Lincoln displayed sets and costumes from DreamWorks Studios’ Lincoln, along with original artifacts including Lincoln’s stovepipe hat, lent by Hildene, Mary Todd Lincoln’s portable commode, and dozens of other unique personal effects. Important documents covered every aspect of Lincoln’s career, from his earliest known writing (teaching himself compound interest) to important letters on slavery, leaves from his 1864 State of the Union Address, and the 13th Amendment ending slavery. We are proud to have helped arrange the loan of many of the highlights.

This was the only exhibition in New England to display Lincoln-signed copies of the Emancipation Proclamation and Thirteenth Amendment (lent by an anonymous client), as well as other fascinating documents, paintings and artifacts that narrated this decisive moment in the quest for human freedom. For context, the exhibit included a scarce early facsimile of the Declaration of Independence we loaned, and a scarce Connecticut printing of the Constitution (lent by the Scarsdale Public Library).

Abolishing Slavery: The 150th Anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation

The New-York Historical Society is commemorated the sesquicentennial of the Emancipation Proclamation with a display of rare documents we acquired for the Gilder Lehrman Collection, including Lincoln-signed copies of the Emancipation Proclamation and a congressional copy of the Thirteenth Amendment.